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Friday, July 21, 2017

Crusader Horses

Horses were an
absolutely essential — indeed defining — component of a knight’s equipment. The
German word for knight (ritter)
derives directly from the word for rider (reiter),
while the French and Spanish terms, chevalier
and caballero, derive from the word
for horse (cheval and caballo respectively). While a knight
might temporarily be without a mount, without a horse a knight could not
fulfill his fundamental function as a cavalryman. Indeed, the symbol of
knighthood was not the sword (infantrymen had those as well) or even the lance (they
were throw away pieces of equipment), but the (golden) spurs tied to a knight's heels
during the dubbing ceremony. Richard Barber notes in his seminal work The Knight and Chivalry that being
financially in a position to outfit oneself with arms and horses was crucial to
knightly status. David Edge and John Miles Paddock argue in their comprehensive
work Arms and Armour of the Medieval
Knight that “[a knight’s horse] was the most effective and significant
weapon the knight had; the basis of his pre-eminent position in society and on
the battlefield.”

In short, knights
needed horses — significantly not just one horse but several. This short post provides a overview of a knight's equine needs.

The warhorse or destrier, is the most
obvious of a knight’s horses. This was the horse a knight rode into battle,
joust or tournament. This horse was his fighting platform. It was trained to
endure the shock and noise of combat. In later years, destriers were sometimes
also trained to lash out at enemies with teeth and hooves thereby becoming, as
Edge and Paddock note, a weapon as
well as a fighting platform. Knights rode stallions, not mares or geldings.
This was in part because stallions were considered more aggressive, but also
because riding a mare or a gelding detracted from a knight’s image as a virile
warrior.

Destriers had to
be strong because they needed to support a fully armored knight and because
they had to withstand the press of horseflesh in a charge and endure uninjured
the impact of charges by other horses. They particularly had to have powerful
haunches to absorb the shock of frontal collisions with enemy cavalry or in
a joust. This does not mean, however, that destriers were massive, heavy horses
similar to modern draught horses. Archeological
and artistic evidence suggests that the warhorses of crusader knights were no
more than 14-15 hands high (a hand is four inches and horses are measured at
the withers, the bone over the shoulders at the base of the neck). Furthermore, they had to be very responsive
to their riders, and that means sensitive and agile. They can best be compared
to modern quarter horses.

Destriers were
not a specific breed of horse, so arguably the defining characteristic of a
destrier was simply its function — and price. If a knight thought a horse had
what it took to be a fine destrier, he was willing to pay a large premium for
that — and anyone in possession of a horse with the necessary qualities was
going to ask a commensurate price for it as well. In short, destriers were outrageously
expensive. They cost 4 to 8 times the price of lesser or ordinary horses. They
cost as much as the armor a knight wore. They could cost as much as the annual
knight’s fee — in short roughly the annual income of the gentry. The equivalent is the price of a top-line BMW
or Mercedes today.

Like any horse,
destriers were vulnerable to colic and injury, however, which meant a knight
was well advised to have more than one destrier — if he could afford it. Even if he could and did, however, he was
likely to have a favorite. The destriers of knights in contemporary romance and
legend all have names: Baucent, Folatise, Babieca etc., but perhaps no description
is more famous that the Dauphin’s praise for his horse before Agincourt in
Shakespeare’s Henry V. “When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots on
air; the earth sings when he touches it…. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure
air and fire….”

For all their
value and importance, however, a knight spent far less time
mounted on his prized destrier than on his palfrey(s). Palfreys
were riding horses, transportation not weapons, the means
of getting from point A to point B. Since medieval knights rode
everywhere -- to oversea their estates, to visit neighbors, when hunting
or hawking, to attend court or to go courting. In short, a knight spent
literally countless hours
with his palfrey(s). Palfreys were bred not for strength and fierceness
but for
smooth gates, endurance and common sense. They were probably much the
same size
as destriers, but lighter — marathon runners rather than sprinters,
wrestlers
more than boxers.

Since these
horses were just as likely to get colic or injured, the need for more than one
palfrey was just as compelling as with destriers, but given the substantially
lower price of palfreys the possession of more than one was considerably more common.
Knights would normally have possessed at least two and wealthy nobles likely
had stables of horses at their disposal for transport purposes.

The last and lowliest
of a knight’s horses was his sumpter or
packhorse. These were essential for transporting equipment, notably armor when it wasn't being worn. A
knight did not travel light. He needed a tent for camping out, a bedroll for
sleeping on, basic utensils for cleaning, grooming and cooking, a change or two of
clothes, supplies of food and — in more arid climates — water as well.
Depending on the purpose and duration of travel, a knight might even take with
him simple furnishings to ensure comfort while on campaign or traveling long
distances. All that was carried on pack animals, either sumpter horses, mules
or donkeys. We know little about these poor beasts of burden beyond that they
were common and cheap. They were “hacks” largely interchangeable, nameless, and
unloved.

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St. Bernard:

Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!

How secure, I say, is life when death is anticipated without fear; or rather when it is desired with feeling and embraced with reverence! How holy and secure this knighthood and how entirely free of the double risk run by those men who fight not for Christ! Whenever you go forth, O worldly warrior, you must fear lest the bodily death of your foe should mean your own spiritual death, or lest perhaps your body and soul together should be slain by him.

Indeed, danger or victory for a Christian depends on the dispositions of his heart and not on the fortunes of war. If he fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil; and likewise the results can never be considered good if the reason were evil and the intentions perverse. If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you perchance kill a man, you live a murderer. Now it will not do to be a murderer, living or dead, victorious or vanquished. What an unhappy victory--to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you!

But what of those who kill neither in the heat of revenge nor in the swelling of pride, but simply in order to save themselves? Even this sort of victory I would not call good, since bodily death is really a lesser evil than spiritual death. The soul need not die when the body does. No, it is the soul which sins that shall die.

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port.

Once he finds himself in the thick of battle, this knight sets aside his previous gentleness, as if to say, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord; am I not disgusted with your enemies?" These men at once fall violently upon the foe, regarding them as so many sheep. No matter how outnumbered they are, they never regard these as fierce barbarians or as awe-inspiring hordes. Nor do they presume on their own strength, but trust in the Lord of armies to grant them the victory.

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Saint Athanasius

"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith?The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ..."You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. "Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."